The continued evolution of the dissemination of information through computer networks has constantly challenged the current state of technology, particularly, as it related to real-time video streaming. Video capture and transmission has been constantly evolving since the earliest silent films and audio-visual films that used a projector to illuminate the contents of each frame of the film onto a screen. Video transmission leaped forward upon the development of transmitting audio and visual information over radio frequency (RF) waves into homes wherein video and audio was viewed in a living room on the television.
Audio and visual data transmission technology advanced further with the development of networks providing cable television services wherein the audio and visual data for many channels was transmitted simultaneously through a wired connection. Another leap in video data distribution technology occurred in the past fifteen years with the expanded scope of the internet and the transmission of data over wired networks updated and expanded to provide access to the internet. The evolution of the internet and the refinement of video capture devices have resulted in an enormous amount of audio/video being captured and posted on individual websites or through sharing sites like YouTube®. The internet has also had an enormous affect upon news and information gathering and subsequent transmission, thereby providing the world with virtually instantaneous dissemination of information. In recent local, national, and world events, video uploads and posting of videos onto social media or other sharing sites immediately after the video has been captured or emailing the just captured video files to news organizations has continued to feed the expectations of the news consuming public for instantaneous news.
One recent development combining advances in hardware technology and computer networking is instantaneous news or media transmitted and viewed in substantially real-time video data streams. Real-time video data streams can now transmit a live event through the wired connections of a computer network such as the internet to allow a person in New York City may be able to view a concert or sporting event in London or Paris on their computer in their living room in virtually real time. The broadcast of an audio-visual event that can be viewed on known media players installed on a personal computer, laptop, smart phone, or tablet, such as Windows® Media Player, QuickTime®, and VideoLAN™ has become common place and demanded by today's media consuming public.
When real-time video data streams are captured on a stationary camera, encoded on an encoder that is wired directly into the computer network and transmitted through the same wired computer network, very limited signal interruption and/or data loss occurs during the transmission of the encoded video data stream. As such, the video data stream is decoded easily on conventional decoding applications and viewed substantially in real-time by the end user. Real-time video data streaming is becoming more and more common, and commercially available software applications now permit anyone having access to a PC or laptop that is connected to the internet and equipped with a web cam to video stream.
More recently, the transmission of real-time encoded video data streams through a computer network has been expanded to transmitting the data stream, at least in part, through a radio frequency (RF) data link from moving vehicles, very remote locations, or any other location or conditions wherein the video feed cannot be continuously wired into the transmitting computer network. The insertion of an RF data link into the physical layer of the computer network and the increased instance of data loss and corruption associated therewith has exposed a shortcoming in commonly implemented video data streaming decoding software that must be overcome in order to provide the end users a desirable end product that does not fail when losses in the data stream are introduced by the RF link.
Current video data streaming systems incorporate an asymmetric compression methodology wherein the encoders are more complex than the decoders. The encoder is usually algorithmic and adaptive whereas the decoder is less sophisticated and, in a sense “dumb,” in that the decoder merely carries out fixed actions on the receiving end of the transmission. This methodology prevails in the marketplace because it is the most resource efficient. The higher cost item (a more complicated encoder) is located at the source of the data subject to transmission and the lower cost item (a compatible decoder) can be cheaply distributed to all of the end users. A majority of the commercially distributed decoder applications currently installed and used by end users simply are not developed to recover from data stream corruptions due to the desire to keep the costs of the application down. As a result, the decoders often crash, freeze, or shutdown when trying to decode an interrupted or corrupted data stream that commonly results from transmission over an RF data link.
Today's demanding consumers do not continue to subscribe and pay to view streaming video that continually, routinely and unpredictably causes their computers to freeze or crash. Thus, there is a substantial need in the art to condition an encoded real-time video data stream including missing or corrupt data, data sequences, or operations due to being transmitted, at least in part, over an RF data link to compensate for the associated data loss or corruption so that the existing software or hardware decoders receive a continuous, uninterrupted video data stream having a conditioned data sequence sufficient to avoid a stall, crash or other inconvenient freeze or interruption of an end user's computer during decoding to allow for uninterrupted viewing of the video data stream.